Image kindly provided by Roke (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Jules Verne’s adventure story was published in 1873. Phileas Fogg of London and his French valet, Passepartout, attempt to circumnavigate the world in 80 days on a £20,000 wager (roughly £2.25 million today) set by his friends at the Reform Club.
While we might have 80 days ahead of us in lock-down with the CoVid-19 coronavirus, this doesn’t mean we can’t travel – the internet at least.
The fourth major stop in Fogg’s journey was Hong Kong – a city and special administrative region of China in the eastern Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places in the world. It became a colony of the British Empire after the Qing Empire ceded Hong Kong Island at the end of the First Opium War in 1842. The colony expanded to the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 after the Second Opium War and was further extended when Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898. The territory was returned to China in 1997. Hong Kong maintains separate governing and economic systems from those of mainland China.
Originally a sparsely populated area of farming and fishing villages, the territory has become one of the world’s most significant financial centres and commercial ports. It is the world’s tenth-largest exporter and ninth-largest importer. Hong Kong has a major capitalist service economy characterised by low taxation and free trade, and the currency, Hong Kong dollar, is the eighth most traded currency in the world. It has the largest concentration of ultra-high-net-worth individuals of any city in the world and there is severe income inequality among its residents.
Hong Kong is a highly developed territory and ranks fourth on the UN Human Development Index. The city also has the largest number of skyscrapers of any city in the world and its residents have some of the highest life expectancies in the world. The dense space also led to a developed transportation network with public transport rates exceeding 90%. [Source: Wikipedia]
You are spoilt for choice when it comes to radio stations in Hong Kong – there are dozens. For a bit of fun, you could try Billboard Radio China Asia Hitz for a day!
